Puntland–Islamic State conflict The origins of the Islamic State in Somalia trace back to 2012, when
Abdul Qadir Mumin was sent by the al-Shabaab leadership to its remote outpost in Puntland, far from the insurgent group's primary areas of operation in southern Somalia. As a cleric with little military experience, Mumin's role in Puntland was originally to attract recruits for the numerically small and militarily weak local al-Shabaab group, which was led by
Mohamed Said Atom at the time. During the course of the
Galgala campaign in 2014, however, Atom defected to the government, and Mumin was forced to take control of the Puntland group. Isolated in the remote north and feeling increasingly distanced from al-Shabaab, Mumin began to consider himself more ideologically and operationally independent. Meanwhile, the
Islamic State had launched a propaganda campaign to convince al-Shabaab to join to them, which was "angrily refused" by al-Shabaab's central leadership. Despite this, several cells of al-Shabaab members found IS's ideology attractive or saw this new Jihadist organization as a way to challenge al-Shabaab's leadership at the time. Thus, several small pro-IS groups emerged in southern Somalia. This was however not tolerated by the Somali organization, which released statements condemning dissenters and ordered its internal security service Amniyat to arrest or kill pro-IS elements such as Hussein Abdi Gedi's faction in
Middle Juba. Mumin, however, long dissatisfied with his situation, pledged ''
bay'ah'' to
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State in October 2015. This caused a violent split within Puntland's al-Shabaab, as only 20 of the 300 local Islamist fighters joined Mumin, while the al-Shabaab loyalists attempted to kill these defectors. Mumin's small group proceeded to form
Abnaa ul-Calipha, better known as
Islamic State in Somalia, and to evade their erstwhile comrades, while recruiting new members for their cause. Al-Baghdadi and the IS leadership did not acknowledge Mumin's bay'ah, but IS central media continued to promote them in the following years While Mumin's group in the north thus managed to survive, the situation of pro-IS forces in southern Somalia consequently became even more precarious. In two notable incidents in November and December 2015, al-Shabaab attacked and destroyed two of the most important southern IS cells, namely the ones of Bashir Abu Numan and
Mohamed Makkawi Ibrahim. Pro-government forces such as the
Somali Armed Forces and
Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a also claimed to have targeted southern IS groups. As result, IS forces in southern Somalia remained very weak, and those that survived appear to have accepted Mumin's authority over time, formally becoming part of ISS. As result, the "disparate clump of pro-Islamic State cells" in Somalia transformed into an "organized group". Most of the IS cells remaining in southern Somalia are concentrated in
Mogadishu.
Rise in power and Qandala campaign , which is also sometimes used by the group In March 2016, an ISS cell in southern Puntland was pursued by al-Shabaab fighters into
Mudug; the pursuers were however attacked and completely defeated by the
Puntland Dervish Force and
Galmudug soldiers, thus unintentionally allowing the Islamic State militants to escape into safety. From this point onwards, ISS and al-Shabaab temporarily ceased fighting each other with the exception of some isolated incidents. Over the following months Mumin's followers built up their strength, and by April 2016 they had set up a temporary training camp named after Bashir Abu Numan, an early pro-IS dissident who had been killed by al-Shabaab in November 2015. By October 2016, ISS had claimed less than one dozen attacks overall since its foundation, showing that the group was still relatively weak. Nevertheless, the fact that many of these strikes had taken place in Mogadishu, indicated that ISS had become able to operate throughout wider Somalia, not just in its core regions in Puntland. Mumin's men were forced to retreat to El Ladid, a village 30 kilometers south of Qandala, where government forces once again attacked and scattered them on 18 December. Overall, ISS suffered numerous casualties during the Qandala campaign, It also became generally more active.
Expanded terrorist attacks and announcement of Wilayat al Somal in February 2017. The Qandala campaign resulted in the Puntland government as well as the
African Union taking ISS more seriously, with both taking more steps to counter ISS' growing strength. In addition, ISS began to cooperate with al-Shabaab to a limited degree during the subsequent months. On 8 February 2017, ISS launched its next major attack in Puntland, with several militants of the group attacking the Village Hotel in
Bosaso. A fierce shootout ensued, with the hotel's guards eventually repelling the attackers. At least four guards and two ISS fighters died during the fighting. On 28 March 2017, ISS
ambushed a convoy of Puntland soldiers near Qandala. The attackers retreated into the hills after inflicting two casualties on the government forces. On 16 April, the group occupied Dasan village near Qandala, though abandoned it again after a few hours. On 23 May 2017, ISS carried out a suicide bombing, which was possibly the group's very first
suicide attack. When the ISS suicide bomber tried to close in on the Juba Hotel in Bosaso, he was stopped at a military checkpoint, causing him to detonate his explosives, killing five and wounding twelve. In June 2017, a Puntland military official claimed that ISS had been reduced to around 70 active fighters, and sustained itself by stealing food and livestock from local communities. Regional expert
Matthew Bryden, on the other side, said that ISS still had up to 300 fighters and had become entrenched in the eastern Galgala mountains, where it had gained the support of some local communities which felt ignored by the government. Observers also noted that ISS had significantly increased their output of propaganda material in an attempt to sway disenfranchised locals By late 2017, the
United Nations estimated that Mumin's group was about 200 fighters strong. In November 2017, the
United States launched their first airstrikes on ISS, reportedly killing several members of the group in Buqo Valley, east of Bosaso. They failed to kill Mumin, however, who had been the main target of the bombings. Observers noted that these airstrikes indicated that the US military had come to see ISS as considerable threat to the stability of the region. ISS also abducted nine people in the region around Qandala in January 2018, including some off-duty soldiers. The militia later tortured and decapitated at least three of them, leaving them along a road to be found by passersby. At the end of 2018, ISS claimed to have carried out 66 attacks, more than in 2016 and 2017 combined. The group also grew more sophisticated and further expanded its presence throughout Somalia. It had begun to collect taxes (essentially
protection money) on businesses in Bosaso by August 2018, greatly increasing its revenue. At some point in 2018, ISS managed to convince a significant number of al-Shabaab militants to defect, resulting in the formation of an Islamic State cell in
Beledweyne. As result of its increasing activity in central and southern Somalia, the rivalry between ISS and al-Shabaab reignited in full, with several clashes occurring between the groups. In October 2018, al-Shabaab executed ISS deputy, Mahad Maalin in Mogadishu, while Islamic State forces ambushed an al-Shabaab group near B'ir Mirali, southwest of Qandala, reportedly killing 14 rival militants. The growing violence between the two jihadist rebel factions resulted in al-Shabaab central command releasing a speech as well as an 18-page treatise on 20 December 2018. In these works, the Islamic State was sharply rebuked as corrupt, apostate, and seditionist force, while al-Shabaab authorized its loyalists to destroy ISS elements as "disease in the Jihad". This amounted to an official
declaration of war. In the next months, the two factions greatly increased their attacks against each other: They clashed near
El Adde in December 2018, and at numerous locations in Puntland between January and March 2019. ISS reportedly suffered one major setback during these clashes when it lost one of its main bases in the Dasaan area to al-Shabaab. Regardless, neither organizations appears to have suffered to a tangible degree from this inter-rebel fighting, and both have continued to strike government targets. The United States Air Force carried out an airstrike against ISS on 14 April 2019, killing its deputy Abdihakim Mohamed Ibrahim at Xiriiro, Bari region. On 12 July 2019, ISS militants clashed with security forces near the Safa hotel in Puntland's capital, Bosaso, the same day as an al-Shabaab attack on a hotel in
Kismayo. The United States Air Force bombed an ISS base in the
Golis Mountains on 8 May 2019, reportedly killing 13 militants. On 27 October 2019, IS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in the
Barisha raid, whereupon the organisation's central command elected
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as new leader. On 4 November, the Islamic State in Somalia officially pledged allegiance to al-Qurashi. By this time, ISS was regarded as important element in IS's international network, but still suffered from an inability to expand due to pressure by al-Shabaab, the Somali Armed Forces, and the
United States Armed Forces. From late 2019, the group consequently attempted to become more active beyond Somalia's borders, as its forces tried to infiltrate Ethiopia and recruit new forces there. Its operations in Ethiopia were repeatedly crushed by local security forces, and several militants were arrested. ISS had also set up a new training camp, codenamed "Dawoud al Somali", probably in northern Puntland.
2020s In course of 2020's first half, ISS gradually increased the number of its attacks, while its troops evicted al-Shabaab from the contested area around Dasaan, Mudug region. At the same time, it suffered several setbacks. The Puntland Security Forces destroyed several ISS cells in and around Bosaso, hampering the group's ability to operate in the north. ISS' uptick in activity was consequently focused on southern Somalia, mostly Mogadishu. In July, the Puntland Security Forces launched an offensive against ISS south of Bosaso. Supported by the United States Armed Forces, the Puntland troops reportedly inflicted heavy casualties on the Islamic State militants, although the insurgents claimed to have eventually repelled the attack.
The killing of Bilal al-Sudani On January 25, 2023, Senior IS leader
Bilal al-Sudani was killed in a US military operation, alongside another 10 members of the Islamic State in Somalia, according to two senior Biden administration officials. Secretary of Defense
Lloyd Austin confirmed that event in a statement later: On January 25, on orders from the president, the US military conducted an assault operation in northern Somalia resulting in the deaths of several of ISIS members, including
Bilal al-Sudani, an ISIS leader in Somalia and a key facilitator for the group's global network. Bilal al-Sudani was responsible for fostering the growing presence of ISIS in Africa and funding the group's operations worldwide, including in
Afghanistan. No civilians were harmed as a result of this operation.
ISS expansion and Puntland counterinsurgency operation During 2024, ISS began gaining ground. The base of operations for ISS for several years has been
Qandala, 70 km away from the port of
Bosaso, and expansion from this pocket previously proved to be elusive for the group. In mid-2024, ISS struck
Al-Shabaab forces operating east of Bosaso and further expanded their presence west over roughly 100 km to the coastal town of
Alula. Uncharacteristically, ISS has so far not imposed strict rules on the local populations it has come into contact with, though have recently began carrying assassinations, bombings and kidnappings in Bosaso.
Africa Confidential observed that in general, "There is no interference in daily life, no taxation, and no rigid prohibitions".
AFRICOM commander US Gen.
Michael Langley claimed in an October 2024 interview with
Voice of America that ISS had grown “twofold” over the previous year. By 11 January numerous ISS bases had been captured in "Operation Hillaac". == Organisation ==